


O Night

by relic_amaranth



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Eve, Coffee Shops, Comfort, F/M, Light Angst, M/M, Other, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28297968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relic_amaranth/pseuds/relic_amaranth
Summary: Facing your loved ones when you’re having a hard time can be hard to deal with, even for someone as strong as Sam Wilson. One Christmas Eve, he takes comfort with you while he builds his strength.
Relationships: Sam Wilson/Reader
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	O Night

**Author's Note:**

> I got 6k words into a different story and had to scrap it but I still wanted to do something so here we are. Sorry for yet another coffee shop fic but coffee shops are one of my ultimate weaknesses and I miss them. It’s a great setting if you can’t resist the urge to wrap a blanket around your favorite characters. Or at least, give them a warm drink and someone to talk to. This takes place pre-Captain America, some nebulous time after Sam comes home from Afghanistan. I’m fudging a lot of details because uhh…because I can =3 Merry Christmas, you filthy animals <3

It’s a quiet Christmas Eve. It feels too dark for the cusp of twilight, but the rain has been falling steadily all day and the clouds yet linger even though the sun is leaving. You’ve had an extremely small trickle of customers to your little coffee shop, probably thanks to the rain as much as the holiday, but it has been nice and you expected as much; that’s why you made sure you’re the only one scheduled.

Normally you wouldn’t feel so lonely, but you know your favorite regular won’t be in today as he’s visiting New York to be with his family. The thought makes you smile though. Sam Wilson is a good man and he’s been so excited for this trip, talking about it since Thanksgiving with almost everyone he’s ever encountered in your shop. You’re happy for him. Within the last week he’s started looking a little more tired, a little more worn down, and you’re hoping the trip lifts him up so that he’s back to his happy and vibrant self. And if he starts flirting with you again, well…that’s just a nice bonus.

You go through another hour and a half of absolutely no customers before you think you can call it early today. You’re the boss and you only have another hour scheduled, so you start cleaning up what little you have out, and when that’s done, you go to flip the sign and lock up.

To your surprise, that’s when someone appears at the door and tries to pull on it– and to further your surprise, it’s _Sam_.

You both freeze for a moment, but when he takes a step back you fumble with the lock.

“Sam?” you say as you throw the door open.

“I’m sorry,” he says, taking another step away. “I thought you were–”

You lean out into the cold, biting rain, grab him by the shirt collar, and drag him in. You shake the water off your arm and wonder the appropriateness of your action, as he looks utterly bewildered, but he’s inside where it’s warm and you don’t feel bad about that. Also, he tends to have a sense of humor about these things.

Indeed he blinks a few times and draws his lips out into a smile. But, while nice enough on the surface, it isn’t what you’re used to. His normal smile is a slow natural spread that reminds you of a languid sunrise. This one is more like glass breaking, small and jagged. A fracture on his face.

“I haven’t been handled like that in a while,” he jokes and pulls at his lapel for emphasis.

“I find that hard to believe,” you say and study him. The fragile smile falters for a moment, but then holds steady. “I thought you were going home for Christmas.”

He shrugs one shoulder and looks away, and the plastered smile finally starts to fade. “I thought you were still open.”

You mirror his shrug. “No one was coming in. I thought I’d sneak out early.”

“Oh don’t let me–”

“Sit your ass down Wilson.”

He laughs, but he does go sit his ass down in his regular seat in the back corner. You unwrap the leftover cake slices you were going to take home and start the little coffeemaker in the back that you use for quick fixes first thing in the morning. You keep stealing looks to make sure Sam is still there. He’s not talking, which isn’t normally a cause for concern– sometimes the two of you just sit together and enjoy each others’ company– but tonight it feels…wrong. His head is facing away and so he doesn’t seem to notice that you keep poking your head out to look at him. He fidgets, looks at the door every now and then, and just seems generally lost.

You walk out carefully, holding the handles of two steaming hot mugs in one hand and precariously balancing two cake-filled plates in the other. You make it to the table, and Sam is so preoccupied with his thoughts that he doesn’t start to help you until the plates touch the wood surface.

“Shit– sorry,” he says and reaches to help.

“Don’t worry about it,” you say and place a mug in front of him before taking the seat across. Sam breathes in the steam and takes a sip, and you sit quietly with your own cup, allowing him to fortify himself.

It takes a few minutes, but he solidifies into something a little less ragged and his smile, when he can manage one, is small and sad and true. “I’m sorry I kept you open,” he says and looks down at his cup.

“I was expecting to be open for another hour anyways. I’m just five years old at heart and got bored,” you say and get a slight twitch up of his lips before they fall back into place. He still isn’t looking at you and you try to be gentle when you say, “It’s Christmas Eve.”

“So it is.”

“I thought you were going home to Harlem to visit your family,” you say. He’s silent, and your heart breaks a little at what that might mean. “Did something happen?”

“Wha- no, no.” He shakes his head emphatically, looks at you, and then looks away, at the rain hitting the window. It’s too dark to see much, but he remains resolute. Stubborn. “I…told them something came up. That I wasn’t coming.”

Your eyes go wide. Sam is a sharer and you _cannot_ imagine that went over well. “Why?” When he gives a nonchalant little shrug you frown. “Sam.”

“I haven’t been…feeling well,” he says, tripping over ‘feeling’ and finishing quietly. “I think it’s better if I just stay home.”

“You were so looking forward to seeing them though,” you say gently. It’s all he’s been talking about for _weeks_. Or at least…he was. You assumed it was just typical holiday stress but now you’re thinking it’s something else and you feel guilty for not asking, when he’s always been so sweet to you and your employees. “And it sounds like they love you.”

“I’ll see them again.”

You don’t doubt that, but he’s hunched in on himself and he looks so… “Have you been sleeping at all?”

“Not much,” he admits but he sits up and rolls his shoulders. “It comes and goes.” He smiles at you. “Sorry, I should–”

“Is it that you think you can’t handle them or you think they can’t handle you?”

You hadn’t meant to say that, and the way Sam freezes tells you very clearly how much he didn’t expect to hear it, but letting him go like this just isn’t _right_. You see his hand on the table and creep yours a little closer– not touching, just to be nearby. So he doesn’t feel so alone. “I didn’t mean to be pushy,” you say. “But I’m worried about you.”

He exhales like he’s trying to expel all his air in one burst and shakes his head. “I’m not okay,” he says softly. “And I don’t want them to see me like this.”

“Is hiding going to make it any better?” you ask, still trying to be gentle. “It’s a bad time of year to be alone, and they’re probably just as desperate to see you as you are to see them. Or…were.”

“Am,” he corrects, still looking at the table. His hand becomes a fist and he takes a deep breath. “I want to see them, but it doesn’t feel right to make them go through this too, you know?”

“Like you’re inflicting yourself on them,” you say and he nods. You sigh. “Aren't they already going to be worried? That you’re skipping out on them? At _Christmas_?”

He opens his hands. “I can fake it better on the phone.”

“ _Samuel_ … _Wilson_.”

He gives you a brief grin. “Hard to scold someone when you don’t know their middle name, isn’t it?”

“ _Samuel Whatever Wilson_.”

That gets a brief laugh out of him, which ends abruptly when his phone, resting by his elbow, plays a song. You peek and feel a flutter at the caller ID– but he just stares at it. You’ve never seen a man look so weary and wary at the same time.

“That seems important,” you say.

The look he gives you is unimpressed, but he slides his hand over, waits one more ring, then snaps it up with a cheerful, “Hey Mama!” A second passes and after a brief moment of surprise his expression twists down. “Hey…I’m okay, everything is– …oh…okay?”

You reach out to give his hand a brief squeeze and then stand to give him some privacy. His cup is empty but the plate still has some food on it so you take the empty mugs, your plate, and make yourself scarce for a little bit. You hang out in the back room and try not to eavesdrop, but you don’t want him to skip out and be miserable on his own, so you try to just listen for the end of the call.

Fifteen minutes pass and you’re about to exit the back with a full cup of hot coffee to fortify him when you hear, “All right Mama…I’ll be there in the morning.”

He keeps talking but you’re suddenly occupied with trying not to splash hot coffee all over yourself in your excitement. You turn back around and quickly pour the coffee in a travel mug, and box up the last piece of cake. You come out with both in time to see Sam rubbing his ear.

“She must have given you a talking to,” you say. He jolts, like he had forgotten you were there, and his smile comes easier. It’s not one of his bright ones– there’s still a tinge of sadness– but the sight of it fills you with relief. Resignation doesn’t normally look so good, but in this case it’s the best thing you’ve yet seen.

“Nobody can do it better than my mama,” he says fondly and looks at the cup and food.

“I tried not to hear anything,” you say apologetically. “But given I doubt you can get a flight now, it sounds like you’ve got a long night of driving ahead of you.”

He stands. “Yeah,” he says, right in front of you, just inches away. “I guess I do. How much I owe you?”

You shake your head. He’s _very_ close and it is _very_ distracting. “Merry Christmas Sam,” you say and smile at him. “Go be with people that love you.”

His smile softens. “I will,” he says like it’s a promise. And then he…dips in, and kisses you. It’s light and chaste and your skin still feels the ghostly pressure of his lips on yours even when he pulls back. He studies you and you make your smile a little bigger. It isn’t hard.

“Sorry,” he says, still smiling. “Sometimes I think I don’t want to ‘inflict’ myself on anybody, and then sometimes I forget.”

“I don’t think I’d mind being inflicted with you.” You scrunch your face. “Sorry, that didn’t sound so dirty in my head.”

He laughs and you playfully push his shoulder as you step back. “Better get packing before your mama comes to collect you herself.”

He does shudder at that and he grabs his cup…but he stops and writes a number on a napkin, which he presents to you. “For some distance inflicting.”

“You make it sound so romantic.” But you take it, smiling. “Have a safe trip.”

“Guaranteed now.” He holds up the drink that’ll maybe get him through the next hour, but at least it’s something. He wishes you a merry Christmas and you swallow at hearing your name in the softest tone imaginable. And yet he still sounds unsure when he adds, “I’ll see you when I get back?”

“You better,” you say. You both stare at each other for a little while longer, until you finally shoo him out the door so that he can get on the road and you can get home yourself.

Sitting at home with an excellent meal, the rain pattering against your window, and a fire warming your small cozy apartment, you don’t envy Sam having to race to New York in the rain on Christmas Eve, but you smile at the thought of the stories he’s going to come back with and settle in to rest so that you’re ready for his return. This next year is going to be interesting– and pleasant, if that kiss is any indication.

Your lips feel heavy at the memory and they make a smile all their own. Merry Christmas indeed.


End file.
